If you don’t live in the U.K., what unimportant thing does your school system obsess over?

[Flynnstone]

In the U.K. policing uniform takes up a disproportionate amount of time. What is the equivalent pointless thing where you’re from?

That just sounds so very German, I love it.

One of the highlights of my childhood holidays in France, having mooch around a stationary shop.

The correction pen - that to me is a pen that erases ink (but only fountain pen ink) with a blue pen you can use to write over the erased word.

It's stationERy

They all bring in pencil sharpeners. They're just not allowed to bring knives in.

We had this at my middle school in the UK in the 90s. It just seemed normal to me at the time

You don't see why it is a nice thing for children to feel a connection to their native language?

Mumsnet would love this, given the number of “shoes off indoors” threads, all very hotly debated.

I suppose it’s because in rural areas carrying an Opinel is as normal as wearing a watch or taking your keys. None of my French relatives would ever be without a pocket knife in their handbag or trouser pocket. I was given my first one by my grand-père when I was 5.

God that correction pen makes me feel 11 all over again 😂 we used fountain pens at high school

Same when I grew up in the UK.
We were all given swiss army knives when we were primary age. We were taught how to use them safely and saw it as a responsibility

You think attendance monitoring is pointless?!

Well, as the general topic is around education it's not a bad call. Someone up thread thought monitoring attendance was over the top but given education standards are so poor it seems like a good idea.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone is saying that monitoring attendance is pointless. However, England does seem to take things to the extreme with their fines and with stories of people being refused permission to attend funerals and weddings etc.

We care about attendance here in NI, and we consistently get the best grades at GCSE/A level than the rest of the UK, yet there are zero fines and no-one is being told they can’t attend an important family event. I would love to see the stats on attendance across the home nations because I do not believe for one second that England has better attendance than the other nations because of their draconian measures, and the evidence is already in that they don’t achieve higher results because of it.

Totally agree with the Bristol board - there was an obsession :)

My DC2 vomited on a teacher in Y7 and was off for two further days, it was down as "unauthorised medical". In the US we took two days to go on a long weekend and it was "have a great trip".

It’s fairly common to be barefoot at home. It would be unusual at school, I can only recall being barefoot during gymnastics and at the swimming pool. But in general, I don’t think Polish attitude towards bare feet is much different from the British.

That brings back so many memories! Once we got the class reps sorted fairly quickly but stalled on the class rep for governors. I cracked and was elected. Ended up elected as chair. Tried feebly to plead my written German wasn't up to all the reports, brushed off as my "outsider" views would be a positive thing.

It was all fine. Some of the other governors told me they appreciated the fact I'd not let a point be ticked off because I'd ask "But why do we have to do it like this?" and the Head would seethe and couldn't answer "Because we always have and that's what I want."
Recall though with horror a meeting with the mayor and various official bods where my nerves made my German fairly unintelligible.

As a Welsh speaker I have serious doubts about incidental Welsh too.

Why is that @Gwenhwyfar?

I’m not Welsh but Irish, and in primary school here Irish is meant to be used incidentally throughout the day as well as being taught specifically as a subject.

Is that approach wrong in your opinion?

I have doubts about it. The teachers using it don't necessarily speak well themselves or, as I presume is the case with the science teacher the poster mentioned, are actually unwillingly using incidental Welsh (and some are even anti-Welsh). Better to teach it properly as a subject by qualified teachers and encourage immersion education (which another poster complained about in the Basque country).
You're talking about primary school where the teacher in question is presumably a fluent speaker themselves.

Thankfully there's no uniform here in Germany and no school run either. Some parents do pick their children up but mostly they walk in primary, some take the bus or train and by secondary (aged 10) that's standard.

Stationery and books have to be bought but you can borrow them for a fee. When lost the parents have to pay the full cost and my 3 only ever seemed to lose the fat expensive textbooks or atlases at €30 a pop, and that was a decade ago.

When my 3 were at school the obsession was exercise books and stationery. I don't think they're as obsessive about stationery now, judging by the contents of my students' pencil cases. When my daughter was in Year 6 her teachers had a list on the board, names and missing items highlighted. She was embarrassed and I spoke to them in the staff room and pointed out I wasn't buying any more bloody geometry triangles until she started geometry as her brothers had lost/broken countless before they had.

Attendance isn't done by any metrics, when we notice frequent absences we get in touch with the parents and sometimes the school social worker.

Ohhh I want to work somewhere with mandatory slippers! That would be a dream come true.

I am a British teachers and if I died and went to Heaven, I'd want it to look exactly like the stationery section of a large French supermarket.

They also have a brilliant range of magazines which my French is just good enough to read.

But the best thing is the brightly coloured folders with the numbered tabs and a couple of elastics to keep everything safely inside.

Denmark - knives and fire from a young age.

In nursery the kids start off with vegetable peelers to sit and remove the 'skin' from young tree branches. You see these tots of two and three sitting in a circle or around a table concentrating while they work away. It teaches great fine motor skills. By the time they are 5 and 6 they are allowed to whittle away with knives (supervised).

Also from the same age it is common for nursery to have open fires outside to make pancakes and snobrød. Snobrød is a bread that you cook by making the dough into a long sausage and wrapping it around the end of a long stick (that you yourself have whittled clean and pointy). The snobrød is then held and turned over a bonfire until cooked through. The trick is not to set it on fire by getting it too close to the coals! The pancakes are made in frying pans attached to a long pole and held over the fire.

I'd go so far as to say no Danish child, by the age of 8 years old, is ignorant about how to use and behave around knives and open flames.

I've just remember something else that made me go 'wtf' back when the kids were younger. When the child starts school, at age 6, we got a home visit from their school teacher. The teacher wanted to meet them in their home environment. Meet the parents, siblings and even take a look at where the child slept.